


A Friend In Need (1897)

by Cerdic519



Series: Elementary 221B [161]
Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Detectives, Alternate Universe - Victorian, Attempted Murder, Conspiracy, Destiel - Freeform, F/M, Johnlock - Freeform, M/M, Rowing, Untold Cases of Sherlock Holmes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-13
Updated: 2017-07-13
Packaged: 2018-12-01 16:07:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11489892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cerdic519/pseuds/Cerdic519
Summary: All is not what it seems in a rowing-themed case as Sherlock uncovers a cunning deception – aimed at him personally!





	A Friend In Need (1897)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [randomskittles](https://archiveofourown.org/users/randomskittles/gifts).



> Mentioned elsewhere as 'the case at Yoxley Old Place'.

Looking back, it was perhaps foolish of me to assume that Sherlock's recovery from his vile brother's attack was all but complete. Physically he was in good condition – well, good enough to make the entire return journey between Colchester and Liverpool Street more than memorable! - but as we passed through a happy if quiet Christmas and entered the year that would (God willing) see Her Majesty's Diamond Jubilee, I would have been a poor doctor indeed had I not sensed that something was very wrong.

Mr. Lucius Holmes had arranged a private secretary to take all our mail and draft a standard reply that the great man was occupied with a matter of supreme importance, and would not be available for private work 'until further notice'. He had also taken out advertisements in the "Times" and other leading papers, for which I was grateful. I had however fully expected Sherlock to dispense with the secretary some time in the New Year, and I was a little uneasy when he did not. Of course I did not want to push him to resume his work – I loved him too much to try to make him do anything – but as a long, cold January passed with him still showing no interest in new cases, I began to worry.

That month I 'celebrated' my forty-fifth birthday, which Sherlock marked by presenting me with a beautiful tie-pin that I had seen in the jeweller's shop in Baker Street and liked, but had decided was beyond my price range. I was sure that I had not mentioned it to him, but perhaps the jeweller, for whom I knew he had once solved a small matter, had told him. I loved it, and I was more than grateful in return that evening. I was even prepared to.... cuddle him, because I loved him so much.

He really had to stop giving me that knowing look of his! Still, at least that had not changed!

February arrived, and my friend still showed no sign of resuming his work. I found myself beginning to scan the “Times” for anything that might catch his interest, and 're-ignite' his passion for his work. I could not imagine him drifting through life like this and remaining happy about it, even though he seemed calm enough at the moment. 

+~+~+

Now that I came to think about it, the one person that we had not seen at Baker Street of late was our old friend Inspector Henriksen, despite the numerous baking days that had elapsed during that time. I knew that, in his elevated post, he had to do far more paperwork and fewer actual cases than he liked, but I still found it curious that he had not visited.

The answer came in the form of an unexpected visitor who arrived just before St. Valentine's Day. I was surprised; Mrs. Singer knew to turn away all but a few select people. This boy was about fourteen years of age, dark-skinned and looked as if a strong breeze would probably blow him all the way to Paddington. He was almost as tall as Sherlock, but there was nothing to him.

“Thank you for agreeing to see me, sirs”, he said formally. “My name is Master Virbius Henriksen; your friend Victor is my grandfather.”

“You are most welcome”, Sherlock smiled. “Did the inspector not feel able to come himself?”

The boy flushed bright red.

“Grandfather suffered an injury last month”, he said, staring fascinatedly at the floor. “He.... uh, he had a fall.”

I wondered at the boy's reaction. Sherlock smiled knowingly.

“I trust that your grandmother is also well?” he asked innocently.

The boy glared at him. And I suddenly knew the reason for both his embarrassment and his grandfather's prolonged absence. I bit back a smile.

“Let us proceed to the matter at hand”, Sherlock said, earning himself a grateful look from our visitor. “I assume that the inspector needs our help for some matter?”

The boy's reply came as a surprise.

“Actually”, he said, “it is me who needs help. I think that someone who I do not know is going to be attacked.”

We both stared at him.

+~+~+

Mrs. Singer brought us some drinks and cakes, and Sherlock whispered something to her before she left. Once she had gone, he turned back to the boy.

“Pray tell us about your case”, he said.

“I should start by saying that I am probably a bit of a disappointment to my grandfather”, he said ruefully, “in that I do not want to become a policeman when I grow up. My father, his eldest son Valentine, lives in Devonshire where he and my mother are fishmongers, and they have always held that my career is my own choice. I would quite like to become a doctor, although I know that that will be very difficult.

“Although I have no interest in the law, I find newspapers fascinating; not just for the stories in them but the ways in which they are reported. The same story can be almost unrecognizable in two different papers. Two weeks ago, just before I came to London to spend some time with my grandfather, I read a story in our local paper about a Woolacombe man who had been attacked and left badly injured, for no apparent reason. His name was Mr. James Willoughby-Smith.”

The name meant nothing to me, but I assumed (correctly) that there was more. 

“It caught my attention because of the name”, the boy explained. “There is a Willoughby at my local school; a bit of a mother's boy, but all right, I suppose. I thought nothing of the matter until three days ago, when I read a small article in the “Times”. A candle-maker in Poplar had been attacked, and had nearly died of his injuries.” The boy paused. “His name was Mr. James Willoughby-Smith.”

I could see his point. The fact that two men with what sounded like quite uncommon names had endured similar and near simultaneous attacks, some two hundred miles apart yet of similar description, sounded more than coincidental.

“Uncle Vic said that I was stupid to bother you with this”, the boy sighed, “but I managed to persuade him to let me come.”

Sherlock smiled knowingly, and stared at the boy. He shifted uneasily in his chair. I wondered why, but at that moment Mrs. Singer returned with a large tin, which she deposited on the table by the door. She smiled and left us.

“You may tell your uncle three things”, Sherlock said. “Firstly, we wish him well in his recovery from his recent, ahem, 'fall'.”

The boy blushed again. I tried not to entertain a certain mental image of our police friend and his wife. Sharing was not always a good thing.

“Secondly”, Sherlock said, “I shall be delighted to look into this small matter for you. And thirdly....”

He grinned widely.

“Thirdly, whatever else befalls you today, do not fail to deliver the cake that your grandfather asked you to bring back 'if there was one going spare'.”

The boy shook his head in despair.

“Grown-ups!” he sighed. “Why do I have to become one?”

+~+~+

Once the boy had gone Sherlock fired off a telegram to his brother Bacchus, requesting the names of any more 'James Willoughby-Smith's. I half-feared that the irritating oik might use this as an excuse to pay a visit, but Sherlock assured me that it had been made patently clear to the lounge-lizard that his presence was _not_ wanted, and that nothing short of a national emergency would be considered just cause for a visit. And that Sherlock had a new revolver which he was longing to try out.

It turned out that although the surname was (surprisingly, I thought) not uncommon, there was only one Willoughby-Smith by name of James according to the latest census, a young fellow of twenty-one who was attending Magdalen College, part of Oxford University. I cannot say that the prospect of a further return to the site of our first case, where Sherlock had had his good work thrown in his face, thrilled me overly much, even if our more recent venture there (“The Three Students”) had ended rather more happily. Fortunately it turned out that the young gentleman was on an athletics scholarship, and was training at a rowing-school based in the village of Dorchester-on-Thames, some miles south of the city. So it was to Paddington Station and the Great Western Railway that we headed the following day, to go and meet him.

We alighted from the train at Didcot, and a carriage took us to the school, which lay just to the south of the old Roman settlement. It was odd to think that this had been the Oxford of its day, nearly two thousand years ago, but now history (and the Great Western Railway) had passed it by. The school was a somewhat dilapidated wooden building, and I looked warily at it as we drew up to it. Sherlock seemed more interested in a team of rowers who were sculling their way down the river towards Reading than looking where he was going, but managed (narrowly) to avoid walking into the door. 

The only fellow in the club was, it turned out, a young blond muscular giant who introduced himself as Mr. Peter Blythe-Woods. He cannot have been much more than twenty, and I frankly did not like the way that, once he knew who we were, he looked at Sherlock with the sort of expression that I had hitherto seen mostly restricted to a far too large percentage of the female population (and certain leering former Cornish fishermen). Damnation, Sherlock was old enough to be the fellow's father! I coughed pointedly, and I was fairly sure that some blue-eyed person who was not getting laid (or doing any laying) later than evening did something that looked suspiciously like a smirk.

The amicable giant stopped leering long enough to inform us that Willoughby-Smith, who was on the same team as him, would normally have been there, but the recent passing of his father had caused him to have to return to the family home. Fortuitously however that lay in the village of Yoxley, not that many miles south of Dorchester, so we should catch him there. I was sure that the fellow leered again, this time at Sherlock's backside as we walked away, and I pointedly moved across his line of sight.

“Very dusty in there, was it not?” Sherlock asked innocently.

“Was it?” I asked, confused.

“You were coughing a great deal”, he smiled.

I hated him!

+~+~+

We travelled two stops (and far too much smirking) back towards London and alighted at Goring & Streatley Station, from where we took a cab the mile or so across the river into Berkshire to the village of Yoxley. Despite being so close to the mighty Thames, it was oddly isolated, high on a hill and with only one road leading into and out of it. The leering giant at the rowing club had explained that the Willoughby-Smiths lived in a large house called Yoxley Old Place which, with that cussedness that some people have when naming their houses, was only some twenty years old. The reason for the name (I later found out) was that it had been built after a fire had swept through and demolished Yoxley Hall, in whose grounds it had stood, and most of the estate, which stretched all the day down back to the Thames, had been sold as building land, the Willoughby-Smiths retaining the one large house for their own use. Mr. James' mother had died two years back and he had no siblings, so the place was now his.

I did not know quite what to make of James Willoughby-Smith when we met him. I supposed that, if I had thought about it, I would not have expected him to be wearing the same athletics outfit as his leer-prone colleague, but he still seemed ill at ease in a suit and tie. Sherlock explained the purpose of our visit, and a frown creased his handsome features.

“I cannot think of anyone who would want to kill me”, he said. “And you said that both these other gentlemen who share my name survived?”

“I have had more than one case where a murderer has sought to, as the saying goes, hide a leaf in a forest”, Sherlock said. “If yours was the one killing that succeeded, many observers might consider that just random chance. You say that you are the last of your line?”

“Yes”, the man said. “I am engaged to a Miss Eliza Mummery from Cholsey – you must have passed through the station there if you went to Didcot – and we are due to marry next year. I would like to have wed her sooner, but she wishes that an uncle, who is commanding a regiment in India and is due home this Christmas, should be able to attend.”

“Who would inherit the estate in the event of your death?” Sherlock asked. The young man frowned.

“My cousin Bill, I suppose”, he said.

“You suppose?” I asked, curiously. If I had been the last person of my line, I was sure that I would have carefully checked who came after me, if only because my life with Sherlock made me aware that several of such people were not always minded to wait for nature to take its course.

“Bill wouldn't hurt a fly!” Mr. Willoughby-Smith said scornfully. “I can't imagine him doing anything like that. Where did the other attacks take place, may I ask?”

“London and Devonshire”, Sherlock told him. “Fortunately an astute young friend of ours from the latter area spotted the connection, which is why we came to warn you.”

“You think that I may be attacked?” the man asked dubiously.

“I think it quite likely”, Sherlock said. He looked around the room curiously. “I see that you have a cabinet over there with trophies in it. Are they yours?”

The young man laughed.

“I am far too young to have such baubles as yet, sirs”, he said. “My father was a brilliant shooter, and those are all his.”

Sherlock nodded thoughtfully.

“I suppose that, now this new version of the Olympics Games has taken off, some of you will be hoping to represent the country in that?” he asked.

For some reason this question seemed to unnerve our host slightly.

“I do not know that I am really good enough”, he said modestly.

“Not like the brilliant Saint John Ashe, who won for us last year”, Sherlock said. “Did anyone from the club go to Athens to see his great victory?”

“They did not, sir.”

Sherlock looked at him thoughtfully. I wondered if he was going to ask another question, but we were interrupted by a footman with a message for our host. He took it and glanced briefly at it, then read it again, looking rather more worried.

“What is it?” I asked.

“It says, 'third time lucky'”, the man said, looking suddenly very pale. “And there is no name on it. Lord, you were right!”

“We must act!” Sherlock said firmly. “I know that one must respect the law wherever possible, but I will not allow your cousin to finish what he was very obviously started. I will send a telegram to my brother Lucius, and tell him that I _demand_ an agent to track down your cousin, and stop him from this foul act!”

I wondered at that. Why not safeguard the young man ourselves? But perhaps my friend was still feeling not one hundred per cent yet.

+~+~+

Sherlock insisted on staying in the Old Place until he had received a telegram from his brother that the unseen Bill Smith was being closely monitored. He then seemed quite happy to go, and I wondered at his confidence. Might the murderer not give his shadow the slip, and out-fox him?

All right, I was that stupid. No need to go on about it!

+~+~+

I should have mentioned that another side-effect of Sherlock's recent attack was that our couplings had become quite rare. We still slept together, of course, but apart from that one time on the balcony around the light-house on Futility Island, he seemed a lot calmer in our sexual encounters of late. I did not say anything, but I missed the old times when I would barely be able to walk the following day, and the ache in my backside was agonizingly glorious. 

Sherlock had seemed to take an unusually long read of the “Times” that morning, and I had wondered why. The day then proceeded quietly enough until a little after lunchtime, when we had two unexpected guests. Mr. Lucius Holmes and Mr. James Willoughby-Smith.

“I hate saying this to a little brother”, Mr. Lucius Holmes said grudgingly, “but you were right on this one. Bill Smith took a gun and went to kill his cousin last night. We laid a trap in the bed so he just fired into a set of blankets. When he saw we had four policemen in the room he tried to shoot his way out. He did not make it.”

I winced.

“Are the policemen all right?” I asked. 

“One of them sustained a minor injury”, Mr. Lucius Holmes said, “but nothing serious. He is not even off work with it, although I suspect that he thinks that that is a bad thing.”

“So there is no death in the Willoughby-Smith case”, Sherlock said. He seemed oddly calm, even compared to of late, I thought.

“That is the odd part”, his brother said. “Bill, it turned out, was short for Willoughby. It was a family name. So Willoughby-Smith, hyphenated, was all right, but plain old Willoughby Smith without the hyphen died.”

Sherlock pursed his lips and thought for a moment, staring in fascination into the fire. I wondered what he was thinking about. Then he turned and stared at the young rower.

“I do have one question, if I may?” he said.

“Of course, sir.”

_“Who the blazes are you?”_

I stared at him in shock. The young man sat back, evidently nonplussed.

“Pardon, sir?”

“Well, I know for one thing that you are almost certainly not called James Willoughby-Smith”, he said. “I doubt that you have ever rowed a boat in your young life, despite your physique. So, who are you?”

The young man looked across at Mr. Lucius Holmes for help. Sherlock's brother stared back at him then, to my surprise, laughed.

“One of these days”, he said, sounding almost rueful. “One of these days, Sherlock, I am going to put one over on you!”

“But today is not that day”, Sherlock said with a smile. “This whole thing was a set-up, was it not?”

His brother nodded.

“John here said that you were depressed”, he said with a sigh. “I talked with your friend Henriksen, and we set the whole thing up. We knew that you would be unlikely to turn down an appeal from his grandson.”

“So Victor is uninjured?” Sherlock asked. Trust him to spot that. His brother shook his head.

“That bit was true”, he grinned. “Poor Virbius!”

“And this is?” Sherlock asked.

“Alfie's brother-in-law, Mr. Lance Denton.”

“I am sorry, sir”, the young man said, blushing.

“That is all right”, Sherlock said warmly. “You did quite well, and only gave yourself away in three small ways. And two of those were because I was testing you.”

“How, sir? If you do not mind me asking?”

Sherlock smiled.

“You said that the trophies were your father's for shooting”, he said. “I had a short amount of time to look at them, and I spotted ones for fishing, archery and tennis in there. Unless your father was an all-round sportsman, I doubt that he would have had time for all of those activities!”

The young man blushed.

“That made me suspicious”, Sherlock said, “hence the Olympic questions. Our nation's best rower is Saint George Ashe, not Saint John. And if you were as committed to your sport as it appeared, you would surely have known that, although rowing had been scheduled as an Olympic sport in Athens, bad weather had forced it to be cancelled.”

And he had the brass neck to accuse me of knowing too much about the social pages, whilst he was a walking sports encyclopædia!

“I just wanted to help you get back into the swing of things”, Mr. Lucius Holmes said.

I was about to say that we should move on from this when a thought struck me.

“Wait a minute!” I said. “What about that Peter fellow, who looked at Sherlock the wrong way.”

“What wrong way, doctor?” Mr. Lucius Holmes grinned. “Peter is Lance's friend, and he 'bats for the other team', to use the current horrible colloquialism. Doubtless he was just enjoying the riverside view.”

I scowled at that.

“I think that this meeting is over”, Sherlock said, and I gulped at his actually using The Voice when we had guests. “John is clearly suffering from jealousy issues, and that matter needs to be resolved most urgently. I dare say that I will see you shortly, brother.”

“I think you will be seeing a lot of John even more shortly!” his brother leered. “Come, Lance. Let us leave before we see things that would doubtless scar you forever!”

Sherlock shook hands with the two visitors and showed them to the door, then turned back to me.

“Oh John......”

Lord have mercy on my poor backside!

+~+~+

The Lord did not. Thankfully!

+~+~+

Our next case starts with another young client, whose grandfather is confused about a painting that has not been stolen.


End file.
